categories

archives

Meta

latest:

joey ramone is dead, 10 years gone

I remember the night Joey died. I remember getting the news, I remember the first email hitting my inbox with a ding and then the ding ding ding continuing, building, as I sat there reading that first email with that first news story, not believing what I was reading, and then reading it again and again as though rereading it I would find something different, that he would somehow not be dead. I remember listening to the U2 show from Irving Plaza and thinking that things sounded good, as they covered “I Remember You,” not knowing that they had just seen Joey in his hospital room and things were not good, at all. I remember sitting there feeling alone, 3,000 miles away from New York City, wanting to go into a bodega, buy a 7 day votive candle, walk down Bowery and stand in front of CBGBs and light that candle and stand there and cry for a good long while. But I couldn’t do that, because I wasn’t there.

A few months later, I started a novel about how someone’s life changed the night Joey Ramone died. It was originally titled JOEY RAMONE IS DEAD, and is now called B-SIDES AND BROKEN HEARTS, and it’s (finally) being published this summer.

If you want to find out when the book is available, you can sign up for my mailing list. (God, that sounds weird.) I will also post more info here over the coming weeks.